Hungarian news in English, your guide to the politics of Hungary.

“EU openly threatens V4 countries”

The Belgian prime minister’s recent “threat” in connection with migrant quotas highlights the biggest stake of the spring election: whether or not Hungary will become an “immigrant country”, a government official said on Sunday.

“Too many people have fought for our culture and freedom for us to give them up now,” Csaba Domotor, parliamentary state secretary of the prime minister’s office, told public Kossuth Radio.

Domotor reacted to comments by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel who had told Belgian news site Le Soir last weekend that Visegrad countries that “refuse to act in solidarity [with the rest of the EU] are being given an ultimatum”. Unless they come to a consensus on the matter at the European Council heads of government by June this year, the debate will be decided by a majority, Michel said.

What makes the stakes of the election a bit more clear is that the position of Hungary’s opposition parties is known, Domotor said, adding that “practically the entire opposition is pro-migration and pro-subservience”.

Domotor said the Belgian prime minister’s comments proved that the EU plans to start implementing its mandatory migrant relocation scheme by the summer. He said the EU wanted to enforce the scheme “over the heads of the Visegrad Group countries”. This also means that the EU “is applying a new level of pressure”, he said, arguing that Brussels was now “openly threatening the V4 countries and those that don’t want to hear about migrant quotas”.

Domotor said the debate in the EU about migrant quotas had entered a critical phase. The proposal currently on the agenda is far more dangerous [than the previous one] because it would introduce a migrant relocation scheme without an upper limit, he insisted.

“This is out of the question,” the state secretary said. “Several national consultation surveys and a referendum have demonstrated beyond doubt that Hungarians don’t even want to hear about this. And the government must heed the will of the Hungarian people.”

Domotor said that Hungary’s only chance to kill the migrant quota scheme would come in the European Council, arguing that the European Parliament had already approved it and the European Council was looking to follow suit. He said that this was why it was “no accident” that the Belgian prime minister was trying to issue an ultimatum.

On the topic of the UN’s draft document on migration, Domotor said the reason why the United Nations’ positions were important was because its resolutions serve as points of reference for other international organisations. In other words, the UN’s resolutions could make their way into European legislative proposals, he said. One of the many reasons why he said the UN’s draft document on migration was dangerous, was that it viewed the right to resettlement as a basic right. According to the document, people could live wherever they choose and the countries of the world would just have to accept this, Domotor said.